THE Welsh player Paul Roberts, who plays for Hawksbury Bowling Club, has made six visits to the Winter Flyers in Birkenhead Park so far this year and based on his impressive results in previous years he has been overdue a win.

In the final this week against the rapidly improving Joe Edwards who plays in Birkenhead Park he finally showed the form of which he is capable and he took the first prize with an emphatic 21-09 win.

In the quarter finals he was just too good on the day for Tixall's Jamie Fitzpatrick before, in an all Welsh semi final, he got the better of Roger Griffiths who plays for Abergele in the Welsh League.

In his quarter final game Edwards had overwhelmed young Liam Rhodes, the Cammell Lairds player who is gaining valuable experience in these Sunday Tournaments.

In the semi finals Edwards came up against the in-form Bill Atkinson of West Kirby who was making a determined effort to become only the second ever player to record three successive wins. Unfortunately for Atkinson a weak lead when the game was tied at 20-20 gave Edwards the chance which he needed and he clinched the win.

The final seemed to be a game too far for Edwards as Roberts dominated proceedings using his experience to good effect to gain a fairly comfortable victory.

Results:

Quarter Finals: P. Roberts (Hawksbury) 21, J. Fitzpatrick (Tixall) 10; T. Griffiths (Abergele) 21, T. Raybould (Cammell Lairds) 19; W. Atkinson (West Kirby) 21, M. Andrews (Tixall) 20; J. Edwards (Birkenhead Park) 21, L. Rhodes (Cammell Lairds) 06.

With just one more week of qualifying before the top sixteen play off on December 22 the top five players in the points table are: Mick Andrews 59; Joe Edwards 41, Bill Atkinson 38; Eddie Dutton 35 and Paul Roberts 28.

At present players with 15 points and above are in the top sixteen.

Next week is a special day for another reason: It is twenty one years since this series of Winter Tournaments started, at that time in Central Park Wallasey. The hundreds of players who have taken part over the years owe a great debt of gratitude to the organiser, Colin 'Growler' Saville.